2016 Board Game Year in Review

I can’t believe how quickly 2016 went for us here at Board Game Duel. It was a busy year, with tons of family time, the start of preschool for our son, and lot of volunteering in our church and community. We also got in so many board games and video games with family and friends!

We got Arabian Nights for Christmas and after one play we instantly fell in love with it. We’ll be playing it on New Year’s Eve!

We have started enjoying more thematic games, like Mansions of Madness and Arabian Nights. Because we’ve gotten so involved doing Dungeons and Dragons, it’s allowed us to see past euro games and see that storytelling is extremely fun too. I’ve really enjoyed doing more immersion in gaming, like having color changing lights and music. We’ve also been playing some lighter games like Qwinto and Codenames because that’s easier to do with family and with our son, who started playing more games this year. While we still play euro games (7 Wonders and Concordia are still favorites), we also play many thematic games where the mechanics play well into the theme. We still don’t like overly random games, but we do enjoy games that mesh theme and mechanics well.

Our Game Groups in 2016

Our main weekly game group is usually between 3-5 people and always a fun time. We’ve been playing lots of Mansions of Madness lately, has that’s been a favorite. We also enjoyed playing through Pandemic: Legacy during the beginning of the year. We haven’t done as many game groups at my husband’s work just due to scheduling. But we have been playing more board games with friends and family lately. We usually get to play board games 2-3 times a week and even more when there’s an extended holiday break. It also helps that our son is getting into board gaming and can easily play games like Carcassonne, 6 Nimmt, and Qwinto.

Favorite Kickstarter of 2016:

I would definitely say Hero Realms. It came just about on time and it’s excellent. I really need to play it more, but I love the fantasy theme and the gameplay is quite fun. We also loved the ABCs of RPGs Kickstarter, because my son loves the alphabet! I was highly impressed by that Kickstarter and I believe it came on time as well!

What we are looking forward to in 2017

I’m definitely excited to play more games with our son as he gets older and better at games. I also want to start playing role playing games with him as his speech catches up. While we aren’t planning on doing any conventions this year, we are excited to play more games with family and friends, and play games while on vacation. We also look forward to playing more and more thematic games and D&D!